The present invention relates generally to inkjet printers and, more particularly, to the cleaning of printhead wipers which are used to clean the orifices of an orifice plate of a replaceable inkjet printhead cartridge.
The orifice plate of the printhead of an inkjet printer, particularly thermal inkjet printers, tends to pick up contaminants such as paper dust and the like during the printing process. Such contaminants adhere to the orifice plate either because of the presence of ink on the printhead, or because of electrostatic charges. Various methods and apparatus for cleaning the printhead are known in the art. In general, an elastomeric wiper of one form or another is usually provided in a printhead service station at one end of the path of printhead carriage travel so that the printhead carriage and removable inkjet printhead cartridges mounted thereon can be brought into proximity with the wiper or wipers for servicing of the printhead or printheads. Some systems use rotary wipers at the service station for swiping the printhead in a direction orthogonal to the direction of carriage movement. Other systems employ statically mounted wipers which are engaged by the printhead orifice plates during the linear movement of the printhead carriage. One system for periodically cleaning the printhead wipers is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,815,176 issued Sep. 29, 1998 to Rotering and owned by the assignee of the present invention. Other systems for cleaning the inkjet wipers are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,582 issued Jan. 26, 1993 to Okamura and U.S. Pat. No. 5,581,282 issued Dec. 3, 1996 to Okamura, each of which employ a perforated plate on the printhead carriage mounted in proximity to the removable printheads in a path to be contacted by a resilient wiper so that the resilient wiper blade can be cleaned during passage over the perforated orifice plate after the wiper has swept and cleaned the printhead orifice plates. Residue is accumulated in an absorber beneath the orifice plate on the carriage.
It is well known that continuing accumulation of ink or other contaminants impairs the quality of the print output by interfering with proper application of the ink to the printing medium. Removal of accumulated ink and other contaminants from the printer or carriage is often a messy and undesirable job which is not regularly performed by users of the printer. It is accordingly an objective of the present invention to provide a replaceable printhead cartridge having a self contained residue collector on the replaceable cartridge which engages and cleans the printhead wipers so that residue accumulated on the cartridge can be removed when removing the cartridge for refilling or disposal.